


for the heroes

by lxette



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Drabbles, Families of Choice, Gen, Multi, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-17 10:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8140292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lxette/pseuds/lxette
Summary: The night before he leaves, McCree meets him and kisses him long and deep and slow and his breath smells of whiskey.  --In which families aren’t necessarily defined by blood.





	1. there are heroes in memories

Hanzo Shimada is to set off on a mission.

The night before he leaves, McCree meets him and kisses him long and deep and slow and his breath smells of whiskey.

“You’re my dragon, “ he whispers into Hanzo’s ear. His communicator grazes the edge of Hanzo’s wrist as his fingers reach for his hand. His index traces the lines of the dragon’s head, feels the veins along his skin and thumbs his fingers over Hanzo’s knuckles. “My dragon of rebirth and serenity and immortality,” he says along the traces of Hanzo’s mouth.

In the dim hallway lighting, McCee’s eyes are crinkled into soft smears. Hanzo’s breath catches in his throat.

“Find him,” he says, reverently, and Hanzo wonders if perhaps McCree considers him a God just because he is bestowed the loyalty of dragons he does not deserve--

“If anyone knows anything about redemption, it’s you.” McCree grins, wild and feral and bright as the sun.

 

\--

 

He is bleeding _everywhere_.

In hindsight, it wasn’t a good idea to chase a wanted fugitive while already wounded.

But McCree had faith in him and that faith had been missing for so long and he just wanted to _feel--_

He sees the man before him take a step back, lowering the gun clutched in gloved hands. “Finish me,” he hisses, but a part of Hanzo wonders if he will accept death this easily.

“No,” says the man, a low growl. He turns.

Logic: to kill those who may harm you.

Mercy: to let him live because you have hurt enough already.

76 turns and walks away.

 

\--

 

His blood makes the communicator slippery.

He pushes the red emergency button for help and is eternally thankful that Winston implemented such a feature.

But then again, who really checks the channel?

Jesse doesn’t even carry his with him.

 

\--

 

Genji is the one who answers.

 

\--

 

Here is his recalled memory:

He is nine, not quite a boy but not quite a man either, and Genji has bent his arm in an impossible way.

He tells him to stand up, and grabs Genji’s other arm and lifts. He is afraid, because father will surely blame him for not watching Genji carefully enough, so he crosses his arms and pouts and tells Genji that _it can’t be that bad_ because it was Genji’s idea to jump off the stairs anyways. Genji shakes his head and whimpers and Hanzo, slightly annoyed, stomps off to find a maid.

She comes immediately, followed by Hanzo who is in every way playing the lordling, and he watches as she calls the medics and more maids come followed by the cook and by their dad.

Genji gets his arm wrapped up in a pristine white-cast, the cook makes his favourite bowl of ramen, and their dad chuckles fondly and runs a hand through Genji’s gravity-defying hair and tells him to be careful.

Hanzo is just old enough to understand he shouldn’t break his arm as well to get the same treatment, but just young enough to be bitter about it not being _fair_.

The mark of an older brother: expectations are so much higher.

\--

 

Being a Shimada: everything is so much harder.

 

\--

 

“You killed my mother,” Pharah says.

Presenting Fareeha Amari: she is a good, fair leader. She is loyal to her family and the mission. She will never let feelings get in the way of justice.

(Good people are born from hardship.)

Widowmaker laughs, a harsh, hollow sound. Her hair has fallen, black strands splaying across her battered figure half-lying on the ground.

One charge from Reinhardt, and the entire temple has collapsed. There is no place for a spider in a wreckage made by titans.

But he is bleeding, in a way that suggests he is very much not a god, and she knows the answer.

Widowmaker’s face narrows in a snarl as Pharah lifts her gun.

“But you won’t hurt the rest of my family,” she says, and hoists her gun and readies her missiles and lifts into the air.

As they are retreating, she sees Widowmaker’s form among the rubble.

How much does it hurt to be alone?

 

\--

 

They are at headquarters.

All of them, and yet not everyone--there are people missing, just like it has been for years. Hana grabs a coke from the fridge and throws one at Mei, despite her left arm wrapped in a cast. The Chinese girl stumbles, nearly missing the projectile before Zarya intervenes and sets it down on the table, glaring at D.Va.

Lúcio starts first. He has a black eye from when he couldn’t move out of the way of falling debris fast enough.

Pharah wonders if Reinhardt feels guilty. From the quiet way the man has been holding himself tonight, she thinks _maybe_.

“Livia,” the Brazilian boy says, and a part of Pharah thinks bleeding hearts should not be allowed on the battlefield--

Because they will always be hurt.

“Pedro. Daniel.”

Zarya goes next, surprising everyone. The Russian female stands up, posture straight and firm and worthy of a leader, and Pharah admires Aleksandra Zaryanova with all her heart.

She has lost her mother, and that was once too much, but Zarya has lost her village and her friends and all of Russia with the omnic crisis.

(Maybe the more you hurt, the more you stop feeling.)

“Alexei. Viktor. Eva. Feliks.”

It is a way of remembering the dead, the gone, because they are soldiers and soldiers fight but they are also humans and they _hurt_ . And Pharah is old enough now to realise that there are some things that will _be_ , but she still finds it unfair that every victory is won with lives.

That is the reality of conflict: it benefits no one and haunts everyone.

Winston adjusts his glasses.

“Singh. Bayless. Al-Farouk.”

A breath.

“Harold Winston.”

Tracer pats his shoulder from her position perked on the couch’s arm.

“Amélie Lacroix,” she says quietly.

McCree rolls a cigar between his lips. They are missing Hanzo and Genji, because Hanzo

is in the med bay and Genji is there with his brother. He has no right to intrude on their time, but Hanzo is injured and a part of his breath skips with every reminder.

“Liao,” he contributes. “Ana Amari.”

Pharah closes her eyes.

“Gabriel Reyes,” Reinhardt rumbles.

Mercy clears her throat, and all eyes turn towards her.

She raises her eyes to the window, blue eyes flickering along the nighttime emptiness.

“Jack Morrison.”

They’ve all lost so much.

 

\--

 

That night, Angela kisses her in the darkness of her room.

She catches her tongue on the edge of her lip, clutches Mercy close in the dead silence. Holding Angela is like enveloping the sun; Mercy is all soft skin and petite bone and the soft, soft haze of early morning. Pharah kisses a line into the white flesh of Angela’s tummy and the blonde stirs, a soft voice into her ear.

Fareeha is all military training and sturdy, lean muscle. Contrasted to Angela, who bends and flows and flexes. Pharah holds the blonde in her arms, whispers hymns into her ears, and is so in love she can’t see straight.

Angela is the sun and the light and the reflection of a picturesque day, but she is also a healer, a saviour.

Mercy’s fingers trace an old bullet scar on Pharah’s thigh, and wipes her tears away as they slip down her cheeks.

 

\--

 

“Apollon,” Reyes whispers against his mouth. “Apollo, my Apollo, my sun, my stars, my sky and heaven.”

He kisses him, harsh and wild and feral and bites down hard enough to draw blood. Jack watches as Reyes leans back, a grin on his face as a tongue darts out and licks the blood from his lip. “My boy. My beautiful boy.”

Nothing Jack will ever do is enough to draw the warrior-fighter-killer instinct driven into Reyes’ bones, so he closes his eyes and feels Reyes bites his ear and he kisses the man’s neck, a throat made for battle cries and interrogations. His hands feel the scars that criss-cross across Reyes’ chest, his muscled arms as they wrap around his body.

“Apollo,” Reyes whispers again, into his hair. Jack draws a breath and kisses the corner of his mouth, and the Blackwatch commander turns and meets him once again and they kiss until Jack’s lips are sore and swollen.

 _Come back_ , he wants to say. He is the sun but Reyes is the sky, the night. He cannot set without the other there and he cannot bear to rise to swallow the night whole. He does not want to hurt Reyes but the man reads offense into everything he sees because that is the world he has grown up with, and what good use is the title of Strike Commander when he cannot protect those he cares for most?

He sees Jesse McCree, barely a man and already in handcuffs, given an ultimatum and nothing else, and he sees Gabriel Reyes and his cold dark eyes but he also sees Gabriel Reyes and the way he claws at Jack’s back as if desperate to hold onto something--

A commander: someone who has seen more death than anyone else.

A hero: someone who is bound to hurt.

 

\--

 

76 wakes up.

He’s alone.

 

\--

 

 _Come back,_ he thinks.

 

\--

 

Reinhardt needs to sit down. At his side, Pharah draws her gun.

She hears D.Va’s mech whirling into position, guns at the ready.

One of the benefits of nearly dying: she is faster than all of her teammates.

Tracer steps forwards.

Widowmaker hesitates.

“I used to be her,” she says. “I used to be Amélie.”

She grins.

“You still are, love.”

 

\--

 

One of the things about emotions: you can never erase them completely.

 

\--

 

Hanzo is discharged from Mercy’s care a week later with painkillers and regret.

He corners McCree almost immediately.

“I failed,” he says bluntly. “I saw him, and I failed.”

McCree just smiles.

\--

 

Once there was a boy, and he lived for his family and his name and his honour above all--

(but that boy was wrong)

(there are always second chances)

McCree takes his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! apologies if there are any mistakes, it's been a while since i've written anything & my style is weird. this was a quick something i wrote to celebrate the long weekend (yay, no school.) 
> 
> let me know if you'd like to see any of these expanded on, i'm weak to teambonding and i'd love to write if i have time!


	2. a canvas of stars and skies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Hanzo Shimada enters the battlefield with silent grace, even as his dragons devour the battlefield and the sky and the gods themselves._
> 
> _\--_
> 
> _McCree thinks: here is a man who can change the world._

The steady beeping of the communicator is what helps him stay awake. Faintly, Hanzo is aware that he is bleeding--but, that’s not right--

Dragons don’t bleed.

Perhaps he has fallen to earth, as all great gods do once their mistakes have been revealed. His left arm stirs, a steady beat-beat-beat rhythm passed to his heart, and his blood roars within his chest.

_ I want to live. _

There is blood staining his archer’s fingers, his bow lying not far from his reach. He grasps it, feeling the cool metal-and-wood against his skin. There is a thunderstorm stirring within him, a cacophony of live-live-live even though his conscience argues this is what he deserves.

A dance of minds, a battle between two dragons. There is the part of him that says  _ repent for what you have done _ , and a part of him that says  _ live because there is so much more to do-- _

(And it sounds strangely like McCree’s voice.)

He lets go of his bow, and presses the alert button with shaking fingers.

 

\--

 

There are many people he owes his life to.

Angela Ziegler, for granting him a second chance. 

Master Zenyatta, for calming the turbulence within his heart.

Overwatch, for giving him a reason to live.

Genji’s communication systems are built within him so that his reaction time far outspeeds anyone else in the team (with the exception of perhaps Winston, who will leap buildings and roofs to reach those he will never fail again.)

When Hanzo’s cry for help shoots into the system, the cyborg knows something is off.

He is off without thinking, his hand on the hilt of his sword as he moves with all the elegance of someone who has trained since youth, across the skies and trees and with the fading sun in the background. In the back of his mind, he tracks the locations of everyone else who could possibly answer.

Winston-- with Tracer in Nepal. Pharah, Reinhardt, Mercy-- engaging in active combat. Lucio, D.Va--children in a war made by selfish heroes.

Where is McCree?

He doesn’t have time. He speeds towards Hanzo’s location as his sword hilt shivers within his fingers, and Genji calms the soul of a dragon long spent leashed within the earth. Windbound grace at his feet, a body made for twists and turns and camouflage. In his youth, Genji was a fire: all-consuming, all-embracing,  _ alive _ . 

Now, he is a hero who they will sing tales about; the youngest Shimada brother, a tale of regrets and honour and the burdens of blood. He is Genji: a cyborg of marvels and wonders with instincts of fight-survive-protect, and he will be remembered. 

It is ironic. They killed him so he would be forgotten, so his honour would be restored in the wake of a coffin made of harsh silent wood, but now there are statues erected and monuments burnt, and those ancestors that two young boys once sought so hard to replicate are nothing but memories buried in the earth. 

He lands with the grace of a sparrow, feet barely touching the dust ground. Hanzo is splayed across the earth, his robe undone in the struggle and his great chest with the dragon’s tail streaked across his muscles spoilt with blood. His arrows are rained across the land, and Genji frowns.

This is unlike Hanzo. His brother is calculating--fingers made for nocking an arrow rather than sliding across flesh, eyes sharp and golden and dangerous, the mark of a sharpshooter who enters only on the raging heart of twin dragons. 

Introducing Genji Shimada: he is louder than his brother, less skilled than his brother, and without an inkling of honour compared to Hanzo’s quiet reserve and always-present respect. 

But he feels without reservation, cares without repentance. There have been so many who have sacrificed their all to bring him back--

It is time he repays the debt.

 

\--

 

There is a hole in his serape.

McCree instantly smashes the butt of Peacekeeper against the faceless Talon agent who dared to risk a shot at him, and the man goes down without a struggle. 

Sometimes, McCree thinks that fighting highly dangerous trained Talon agents is easier than fighting gangs back when he was a child. 

That is because even the most trained of assassins have a code of conduct, while simple men fight for their lives above all. An assassin’s bullet pierces the skin easily, yet a man who needs to win to survive will hold on and never let go. 

He risks a glance across the battlefield. The enemy is everywhere, and he catches sight of Pharah landing with furrowed brows.

She is Captain Fareeha Amari now. Captain Amari.

The name makes him wince because he knew a Captain Amari once, with sharp bird bones and a throat made for singing battle songs, with the eyes of a hawk and the skip-skip-skip beat of a sparrow in the way she walked, silently traversing the battlefield and ending wars with a single bullet. She had been the messenger of the gods, Apollo’s right-hand, a being so idolized that it came to no surprise that she one day would vanish with the coming of the early-morning fog.

There is no room for mortals in a battle waged by the gods, but it is those trusted by barely-human heroes that suffer most. 

(And those they leave behind that hurt without real meaning.)

Fareeha is not her mother. She is lean and sturdy with muscle, with a walk that commands respect with every footfall. If Ana is the shrike that strikes once and disappears, Fareeha is the eagle that spreads her wings and soars. Where Ana would strike further, Fareeha retreats for the lives of those she loves.

(Sometimes, a child does everything not to become her parent because her mom is a hero, but a memory.) 

The word is on the tip of Fareeha’s tongue, and McCree tips his hat to the fading sky. A memoir. A second chance. They learn from their mistakes, and Overwatch comes out stronger than ever.

\--

 

She never calls the retreat.

 

\--

 

A roar that sets the drum-drum-drum pattern of McCree’s heart into overdrive shrieks through the battleground.

 

\--

 

An arrow streaks through the sky, the feathers rustling in the breeze. In its wake, a dragon forms as the mouth swallows the sun whole. Another coils through the blue-tainted winds, its tail curving legends into the sky. 

 

\--

 

Hanzo Shimada enters the battlefield with silent grace, even as his dragons devour the battlefield and the sky and the gods themselves.

 

\--

 

McCree thinks: here is a man who can change the world.

 

\--

 

The Shimada brothers are a force to be feared. Bestowed the power of dragons beyond what human sciences can explain, McCree knew from the moment he saw them both that the lives would never be the same.

Where Genji is calm and serene with a dragon who will end enemies with a swift strike, there is something off-putting about Hanzo.

McCree sees it the second time Hanzo unleashes his twins onto the wargrounds. Hanzo’s dragons, though powerful, are a violent surge of energy almost rivalling the turrents of Hanzo’s thoughts. They fly not with grace but with chaos, twisting and turning and smashing the ground up in their wake. It is almost as if Hanzo himself is a battlefield, conflicted and broken and hurting. 

McCree is sure everyone is aware, but no one dares to mention. It is enough that the brothers are willing to talk to each other, now.

Until he asks Hanzo one day, as they are cleaning up the destruction of another town ruined in the name of victory, if Shimadas are as good at drinking as they are at the art of war.

 

\--

 

He finds out that Hanzo Shimada is seemingly talented in everything, and it’s just not  _ fair _ .

 

\--

  
In the sleepy wake of too much alcohol and not enough, he wonders aloud.

“Shimada,” he calls, and Hanzo gives a grunt of acknowledgement. Despite the bottle of sake at his arm, Hanzo is still sitting up and poised as ever.

“How could it be,” McCree begins, waving his bottle of beer at the night sky as he gestures, “that such a skilled man like you cannot see his own self-worth?”

He was never one with words, and perhaps that is obvious in the way Hanzo purses his lips and does not reply.

(Or perhaps, Hanzo cannot realise what many others do.)

\--

 

The first time he kisses Hanzo Shimada, he sees stars and skies. 

His fingertips trail along the dragon tattoo embedded in Hanzo’s skin, grazing the faint ends of a dragon’s tail and the careful ink of a dragon’s scales. It is almost as if the creature is alive, and McCree wonders for the utmost time if Hanzo Shimada is truly  _ human _ . 

Everything points his instincts to say no. For only a god would be this talented on the warground, this silent in his presence, and this desperate in love.

And only gods would suffer in the way Hanzo has.

The Shimada story is a tale rivalling that of myths, and McCree wonders if he is dreaming.

 

\--

 

He tells Hanzo of him and him and her on a day when the wind rattles windowframes and the trees whisk about. It is during one of those times when Winston tells them all to lay low for a certain time until things have settled, and he and Hanzo have exhausted all other means of entertainment.

“Tell me of him,” Hanzo says.

McCree tilts his head, still wrapped in the sleepy haze of sleep incoming, and hums. 

“Tell me,” Hanzo insists.

“Of what?” 

A stare of golden brown, and Hanzo raises a slight eyebrow. “The man you see when you look at me.”

Oh.

Perhaps Hanzo is a god, because how else could he have known otherwise? 

He laughs, because he has been caught and it is only half a lie when he tells Hanzo that there is no one, even as his fingers shake and his breath catches in his throat--

Hanzo Shimada is not Gabriel Reyes.

 

\--

 

Sometimes, the lines blur. 

Hanzo is cold and calm and calculating, just as Reyes was back in the glory days of Blackwatch. Yet Hanzo doesn’t argue with him the way Reyes does, doesn’t make him see red when they disagree, doesn’t slam him against the wall and growl deep and low and forceful--

Hanzo apologises with simple gifts and too much reluctance, as if he is unused to this gesture but wants to make it mean something. Gabriel apologises with too much guilt, eyes downcast and brows narrowed, with all the sense of a man who hates who he has become and yet cannot control his anger. 

Loving Gabriel Reyes was destructive and passionate and swallowed him whole, but loving Hanzo Shimada is frustrating and beautiful and drowns him entirely. McCree wonders not for the first time if he is doing the right thing, because his life has been a series of wrong turns and wrong turns and right-but-wrong mistakes.

But then Hanzo takes his hand, an unusually forward gesture, and says nothing more. 

(If only McCree knew that Hanzo is the one who knows McCree is worth a thousand cranes and something more, not the other way around.) 

 

\--

 

So when they bring Hanzo in on an aircraft and immediately rush him to the medical ward, McCree’s heart stops in his throat.

A sensible man: gives up when the battle is lost.

A man in love: chases the shadow of a man who once was everything, because McCree misses him and misses everything Jack Morrison represents.

 

\--

 

It is then he realises Hanzo Shimada is not Gabriel Reyes. 

(he can’t erase the past)

(but there comes a time for old spirits to be buried)

He sits by Hanzo’s bedside, and waits for him to wake. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, thanks for reading !! i really appreciate all the feedback, you’re all so kind! i hope you have a great day. <3


	3. bring me home, and i'll stay a night or twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She feels immortal because she has lost so much, she feels indestructible because everyone else has fallen.  
>  She opens the door.  
>  There is a red visor._
> 
> _\--_
> 
> _“Angela,” he says._

He is standing on a ledge that overlooks the ocean. Beneath his feet, there is rubble and stone and the displays of abused earth, and he is alone.

Screams echo in his ears, past fires and wood long burnt. His gloved fingers grip close a gun, as snug within his hands as the pen he once used to lead commands. He blinks, and he sees the sky through a shade of red.

“Apollo,” someone calls behind him.

He turns. 

 

\--

 

“Don’t call me that,” Jack Morrison says, with a sweep of his long commander-survivor-hero cloak as he brushes past the man standing by his side.

Reyes is the only one who dares match pace with him ever since his promotion. Jack isn’t sure to feel slighted or glad that at least someone is treating him like he belongs.

A soldier: nights spent underneath a grandiose sky, campfire burning against the reflection of guns resting in the dirt, marching with a squadron towards uncertain death.

A commander: days held up in tents discuss battle matters, press conferences where rebels spit harsh words, pictures of his face tacked onto street poles in the large city. 

It is nothing like he is used to, and he tells Reyes so.

A scoff.

“You’ll see, Apollo,” the man says. “Even the most humble of gods are still deities, after all.”

He doesn’t think too hard on it.

 

\--

 

With a scream, he shatters the vase he throws full force against the wall.

The door opens.

“Hey, hey,” someone says, but he sees red, he sees red, and he never wants to--

Strong fingers grasp his wrists before he can strike the person who suddenly comes up behind him, and Reyes presses him into his chest.

“It wasn’t your fault,” the Blackwatch commander says, with a certain tint to his voice.

(How many times has Reyes repeated that to himself?)

 

\--

 

“Want to travel?” Reyes says to him one day, as Jack is filing through the most recent case reports.

He sighs, pressing his fingers into his forehead. He isn’t sure when Reyes crossed from lover-dear-mine to annoyance-stop-go-away, but there is something that doesn’t match up.

He looks up, seeing the dark brown eyes of a man who once mattered so much.

“What is Blackwatch doing?” he demands.

Reyes’ pretty (feral) smile drops from his charming (war-hardened) face.

 

\--

 

He opens the door one day to find Reyes.

Before he can speak, the other has surged forwards. He grips the labels of Jack’s shiny commander suit, pulls him close, and his breath smells like whiskey and blood and the markings of a  _ torturer _ .

“Apollo, Apollo,” Reyes murmurs,  his voice a faint wisp in the area between them. “Don’t go.”

Jack jerks himself swiftly away, just as Reyes grasps for the air. The man comes forth once more, and Jack plants his hand firmly in the middle of Reyes chest, devoid of the warmth he had once sought from the other.

“You can’t go,” Reyes says, his eyes hooded and bloodshot and full of emotion, but Jack closes himself off just as something rises in his throat and threatens to choke his voice.

“Reyes,” he says, “you need to leave.”

Reyes is leaning on the door, his face a mask underneath the alcohol. Before Jack can say anything more, he turns around and slams the door with a shaking slam that echoes throughout Jack’s entire office.

 

\--

 

Ana finds him later, and it is she who calmly strokes his hair as he buries his face into his arms and allows himself to not be a commander and just be a human for a night.

 

\--

 

Curled smoke and empty glasses and wrinkled sheets. Jesse McCree leans back as Reyes passes him the cigarette. He takes a whiff, and closes his eyes.

 

\--

 

It’s all wrong.

McCree’s hair is brown.

 

\--

 

One of the things about being a soldier: your duty will take everything and give nothing back. 

 

\--

 

He has memories. Flashes of moments, bright-white-pure-painful. It strikes behind his eyes at moments he is not expecting, and Reyes’ breath quickens without notice and his head fills with thoughts he ignores.

There is no room for sympathy in Blackwatch. He sees the flashes of pain in McCree’s eyes, the hesitation in the man makeshift fist.

Seventeen. Too young.

(There is something off about a street rat since birth unwilling to beat a prisoner for interrogations.)

Perhaps Jack was right. 

But Jack is gone.

 

\--

 

When Jack wakes up screaming from his own mind, Reyes is there to hold him. 

Jack is his god of love and beauty, the sun rising on the pale background of early morning, Jack is light and warmth and everything in between, and Reyes worships at the altar like a man desperate for another chance.

But gods are cruel.

When he wakes at 3AM with sweat soaking his back, he grasps the covers with a trembling hand and tries to calm the ha-ha-ha pattern of his breath coming in quick gasps. His heart drums against his chest, and he grasps at the other side of the bed.

It’s empty.

\--

 

He should be angry, and he is. Angrier than he ever thought he could be.

When McCree questions their route one day, he grabs the newcomer by the front of his uniform and smashes the boy into the hard, hard wall. McCree’s eyes are open wide, unblinking, and there is a flash of  _ something  _ that stirs Reyes’ blood. 

Until he wonders: is this me?

He doesn’t have a solid answer anymore.

McCree’s slides down the cement, hacking.

 

\--

 

He is in Switzerland.

Something is wrong.

The glory days of Overwatch, he thinks to himself, and the side of Reyes’ mouth curls up mockingly. If only he could see Jack now, see how much the man has fallen. 

They had such dreams (futures) once. 

Reyes wonder what happened to lead them here, inside tight buildings in the middle of nowhere, with hushed voices and choked eyes and the thick swallow of Jack’s throat bobbing as he lays eyes on Reyes for the first time in  _ years _ .

He grasps the control keys in his hand, even as Jack rushes forward and his voice is tight and his eyes are so filled with emotion and tears--

_ Gabriel _ , he says,  _ Gabriel, Gabriel, Gabriel. _

_ Please _ .

But Reyes is a man of war, he is the product of hierarchy and the result of victory, and Reyes loved once and that loved burned him up and he let his guard down once and Jack was the only one who ever made him feel  _ alive-- _

Boom.

 

\--

 

Overwatch is rubble, and they are setting their leader on fire.

The only thing justice is good for is mourning the dead.

 

\--

 

He doesn’t get a gravestone.

 

\--

 

Maybe it’s because the next thing he sees is Angela Ziegler, in all her glory, wings fanning before her in a glorious cascade of light, her form illuminated by the blinking lights.

Why him, he wants to ask, but Reyes can’t find his voice and something feels off. Angela smiles even though her lips wobble at the very edges and she speaks but her voice is hasty-off- _ wrong _ , and Reyes understands.

This is some sick joke, because Angela is an angel and Angela is mercy and Angela is goodness but she failed, she failed to save Jack and she couldn’t even save him--

He slams her against the wall, roaring. The smoke curls around his fingertips, swirls of dark black that mists when he attempts to run his fingers though what his body has become, and he’s both frightened and fascinated at the strange power that drums through his veins, no longer skin and blood and humanity but now  _ nothing _ , nothing, just like he always was and he always will be.

He tightens his grasp around her pale neck, curling his fingertips around her even as his fingers phrase in and out with darkness. She chokes, a rasping noise from such a lovely being, and Reyes laughs.

Gods can’t die, but he killed Jack Morrison, didn’t he?

He’s unstoppable, and he doesn’t know why he ever attempted to stop.

“This is what you’ve made me into,” he snarls, because she is Dr. Angela Ziegler,  _ Mercy _ , but she never did any of the interrogations and she ignored the numerous bodies on the battlefield, yet she is the face of Overwatch and all that is good--

“Where were you?” he accuses. “Where were you when Ana died?”  
A look of hurt, deeper than any physical wound he could hope to deal her, flashes across Angela’s delicate features.

“What about Jack?” he says, and she crumples entirely.

“You failed, Doc,” he says, the nickname menacing and mockingly.

His fingers tighten across her throat, and he--

Pain.

White hot pain bursts across his vision, and he is faintly aware of a sword slashing through his midsection just as his shoulders are peppered with shots.

“I left my smokes here,” someone says, and Reyes’ vision fills with white-hot rage.

McCree.

He lets go of Mercy and she crumples to the ground, hiccuping. 

McCree has that stupid, stupid serape wrapped around his features, and at his side is … 

A cyborg?

“Ah, the doc’s new pet,” he drawls, and the robot flinches.

Does it even have a name?

He doesn’t care.

He finds he doesn’t care about much nowadays, apparently.

But Reyes knows this is a battle cannot win, not when McCree is armed and smoking and dangerous and so far away from the handcuffed boy he slammed into the wall because he needed to hurt someone to stop--

His midsection is stitching itself closed, and Reyes laughs, a harsh, metallic sound.

Ironic, isn’t it?  
He spent so much of his life just wanting to die, because there had to be something wrong with him for Jack to leave him, there had to be something off in the way he wakes up in the middle of the night, the sounds of the battlefield still in his ears and tortured prisoners haunting his every step, but it seems he just can’t.

He laughs, he laughs himself silly, as McCree tenses up and the cyborg whispers a line in a tongue he doesn’t know, and Gabriel Reyes fades into the shadows and exits the compound in a wisp of haunting black smoke.

Sometimes, he wonders what would’ve happened if Jack had been the one closest to the door, if Jack had been the one they dug half-dead half-alive from the rubble.

Or, alternatively, he wonders if they would’ve spent as long looking for him as they did looking for Jack, if the reason the tombstone was never completed is because they’re still looking for the body.

 

\--

 

There’s a knock on the door.

Mercy looks up from where she is scanning documents that Winston sent her, files recording an apparent hacking attempt into Athena’s systems a couple days ago.

“Who is it?” she asks the darkness. Her skin is smooth and pale and without blemishes, but there is a darkened area on her neck that she touches self consciously and thinks of Fareeha.

She sighs, and gets up to open the door. The night is quiet, her favourite time, because it gives her time to think and reflect.

In essence, Angela Ziegler is not as old as some members of Overwatch, but the blonde feels like she’s lived a hundred and one years, sometimes.

She feels immortal because she has lost so much, she feels indestructible because everyone else has fallen.

She opens the door.

There is a red visor.

 

\--

 

“Angela,” he says.

 

\--

 

The ground gives before her feet. His pulse rifle is in his hands, soldiers’ hands, and his posture is straight and firm and it’s like nothing ever changed.

 

\--

 

_ Come back _ , thinks the medic.

_ Come back _ , thinks the gunslinger.

 

\--

 

He came back.

 

\--

 

It’s like those cheesy movies. D.Va immediately pounces on him.

“Wow! It’s like Steve Rogers but if he actually aged!” she declares.

Tracer laughs, bright and happy and  _ loud _ , but no one finds it in their heart to complain.

Zarya gives a nod of acknowledgement, but that’s enough. She was never one for heavy words.

And McCree, well, McCree.

McCree first punches him for shooting his boyfriend four times, but, well, if his eyes are a little wet and his voice cracks and his punch is more a bump than anything, no one has to know.

Angela sits back and holds Fareeha’s hand and watches her family.

(sometimes, the small things are just enough.) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> creative liberties. creative liberties everywhere. 
> 
> thanks for reading, and, as always, drop a note! i'd love to hear what you thought. <3 
> 
> also: SOMBRA SOMBRA SOMBRA. i love her!!


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